Politics! Politics, politics, politics, politics...

Here's why it's important to read political opinions from all over, even if you don't agree with them. Especially if you don't agree with them. And this isn't one of those "It will be good for you to be exposed to other points of view" things; this is solid practical advice here.

So I was reading Infinite Monkeys, which is pretty much the only conservative blog I read (much to their dismay), and I read this, by RobbL. His point is essentially that a Bush victory is almost a foregone conclusion at this point, and the only question is "How big will the landslide be?" I found this surprising, because the last election Bush won was the closest in American history. Plus, I haven't heard that point of view elsewhere (unless you count here, where RobbL refers to "Kerry's savagely derailed campaign").

But maybe that's because I live in a really liberal area and I'm surrounded by groupthink. So first I wanted to affirm my supposition that people are unduly confident on both sides, so a quick Google search for "Bush Campaign" and "In Trouble" quickly turned up things like "The GOP is reeking of fear and the media misses it." (Steve Gilliard) and "Pundits are already noting that the Republicans are all but giving up on winning the undecided voters" (The Blog From Another Dimension).

So I've demonstrated to my own satisfaction that at least one side has people that are unreasonably confident in success. But which side? Well, let's go to the map! I arbitrarily picked ABC News (because I had The Note bookmarked, which made it easiest to get to) and they seem to like This Poll, which has a slight edge for Bush. But that's an edge with over a month to go before the elections, with the debates still to come, and with Iraq still out there.

Let's face it: If the US Troops scour a Saddam palace and suddenly find Osama Bin Laden in a secret compartment, writing "My Evil Plan To Rescue Saddam Hussein, With Whom I Planned the Attack on the World Trade Center", Bush is going to take a victory lap around New York, spike the ball in the UN's face, and then coast to victory. But it's quite possible for Kerry to win. Right now, I think Bush has a slight advantage due to being the incumbent and being better at campaigning than Kerry. But I could easily see him (Bush) becoming an embarassment for the RNC. It's just too early to tell for sure.

Incidentally, I think the hoopla about undecided voters is a smokescreen by both parties. With voter turnout as low as it is, the key to victory is to mobilize voters: if absolutely everyone who likes Kerry more than Bush voted, while Bush votes remained at the National average, Kerry would win in a walk. And vice versa. That's why campaign commercials tend to be so strident: they're not trying to convince you to change your vote; they're trying to convince you that it's absolutely essential to get rid of Bush/fight off Kerry.

Anyway, that's why I think it's a poor tactical decision to start encouraging people to vote tactically on the assumption that your side has already effectively won.

(The subject line is a quote from Mel Brooks's "History of the World Part I", by the way)